


A Surfeit of Bodies

by Airelle



Series: (Re)Incarnations [2]
Category: The Professionals
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-12
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-03-01 04:22:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2759486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Airelle/pseuds/Airelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written between July 2013 and July 2014</p>
<p>I would like to thank Ravenstone for her fantastic beta-reading. My story is much better because of her. All remaining mistakes are mine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Surfeit of Bodies

The 20-year-old Raymond Doyle had been working as a veterinary nurse for a few months when a breeder brought in a kitten for euthanisation. The man had kept it for about a week before deciding he wanted to get rid of it; he bred beautiful, sleek Bombay cats, so had no hope of selling it. The kitten was small, obviously, but he looked healthy and had all the characteristics of his breed - except for one small thing.  
He had three heads.  
More precisely, three faces. His cranium was perhaps a little larger than usual, but he only had two ears, and the rest of his body was perfectly normal. The three faces, set at an angle from each other, each possessed a separate nose and mouth. Doyle knew that two-headed cats - called Janus cats - did exist, although they were very rare. But neither he nor the vet he worked for had ever heard of a three-headed one.  
Doyle looked at the strange kitten. Dark blue eyes – all five of them - looked back at him - or tried to, the angle of the faces not exactly conducive to all eyes focusing in the same direction. Yes, the kitten was a bit freakish, so no wonder the owner had wanted him euthanized. Despite that, there was a vulnerability about him, and a kind of strange assertiveness, as if he was saying, “You’re not going to hurt me, are you?”  
And, of course, Doyle took the kitten home with him, not expecting him to live very long. At least, he told himself, the little guy would know a few days of love and care. He started by feeding the kitten, who proved to be very hungry. His three mouths opened avidly, but Doyle soon learned that only the right one was actually connected to a functioning oesophagus; the other two mouths promptly rejected the milk he tried to feed them.  
The first head on the right had two eyes, but the other two had only three between them, the middle eyes having somehow merged into a larger one. Doyle later discovered that this compound eye could not see, but the other four worked perfectly.  
The kitten was too young to be away from his mother. He still needed help with his bowel movements, which meant that Doyle needed to massage the tiny belly after each meal. Obviously, it was impossible to leave him at all; a kitten this young needed feeding several times a day. So Doyle bought a little bag in which to carry the kitten, and went everywhere with it over his shoulder. Taking him to work was easy, but bringing him to his boyfriend's place when he was invited to spend the weekend proved to be the last time he saw that particular boyfriend...  
To his utter amazement, the kitten thrived and started gaining weight very quickly, like any normal healthy kitten. Even stranger, the kitten’s eyes did not turn the typical golden colour of his breed when he reached adulthood. They remained dark blue. Then again, that was only one of the many strange things about him…  
He mewed with only one mouth. The others opened and obviously tried to mew, but as they weren't connected to the lungs, they couldn't produce any sound. From the beginning, Doyle had suspected the kitten only possessed one brain, technically making him a single creature. However, Doyle did name each of the kitten's faces. From right to left, he called them William, Andrew and Philip. He soon found it tiresome to say "William, Andrew, Philip! Your food is served!" every time, and anyway, each one could not arrive separately to their food bowl. So he decided on a collective name for them. From that day on, they became just "Bodie".  
Doyle quickly learned that, as much as he loved animals, it wasn’t the career for him. He needed more action in his life, to make a difference to society - or at least to attempt it. He quit his job as a veterinary nurse to apply to the Police force. By that time, the three-headed kitten had become an adult cat, and his continued existence never ceased to amaze the vets. He also was in a very fine fettle and had grown like a weed. His black coat was lustrous and healthy-looking. He was rather on the large side for a Bombay, muscular but not fat, except maybe a little around his tummy.  
Despite his rather peculiar appearance, Bodie was very much a cat like any other. His main activities were eating, grooming himself and sleeping, in no particular order; but he always seemed very affectionate towards the human who had saved his life, always greeting Doyle enthusiastically when he came home after a hard day at work. Of course, Doyle thought sometimes with a certain detached cynicism, that could only be due to the fact that he was waiting for his evening serving of food, which his owner always provided first, before attending to his own needs. But - well - it had always been quite obvious that the way to Bodie's heart was through his stomach…  
Probably, cats, unlike humans, didn’t know when they were different, and therefore were quite unaffected by it. Doyle had seen as much when he was a veterinary nurse: three-legged cats or dogs were behaving exactly like any four-legged ones, totally adapting to their loss, or maybe not even noticing they had lost anything. There was no reason a three-headed cat should feel any different from a one-headed one. Indeed, Bodie never showed any awkwardness about his condition.  
Doyle completed his police training, passing all the necessary exams easily and brilliantly. Soon enough, he became a Police Constable in the London Metropolitan Police.  
When Bodie turned ten, Doyle was beginning to have a few problems with his job. His moral inflexibility did not always prove to his superiors' tastes, and his colleagues resented him for having informed on a few rotten apples in their collective basket. He was starting to feel at a loss when a man named Cowley contacted him with the news that he was recruiting for a rather special outfit he had put together. Doyle had agreed to meet him, but he was still unsure what he would say to the man about his sexual preferences. In the Met, he'd had to hide them - there was simply no other option. But in CI5 - at least from the little he'd been able to learn about it - things were rather different. One of his contacts had claimed that George Cowley was practically omniscient. If he lied about it, and Cowley found out or - as seemed likely - already knew, he'd be out on his ear even before getting in.  
So Doyle resolved to tell Cowley up front that he was bisexual and see if it flew. It was a big risk, but he reckoned a smaller one than hiding the truth.  
As it happened, he did the right thing. Cowley - even if he never said as much - obviously knew, and told him he didn't care, as long as Doyle was discreet. He was not a blackmail risk if his boss knew about him. Doyle assured him that he'd be careful, and would try to stick mostly to women anyway as this was easier. Cowley seemed satisfied, and a few days later, Doyle received notification of his provisional acceptance in CI5. George Cowley did make clear that he'd still have to pass the tough two weeks training all new recruits were expected to undergo.  
The training was hard, but Doyle was fit, and he made it through to hear Cowley's recruiting pitch - "CI5. Criminal Intelligence. The Action Squad. The Big A. The Squad. All right, so we may have half a dozen names, but only one job: To see that no one messes on our doorstep. And that means preventive detection, preventive action. ‘To detect, deter and prevent, and or take suitable action and or actions against those transgressors against the law outside the norm of criminal activity. To contain and render ineffective such by whatever means necessary.’ That's our official brief: By any means necessary. That's our loophole. Now I'll tell you my interpretation, I'll tell you what it's really going to be like. You'll be paired off, and from then on, you're the Bisto Kids…”  
Not very long after his position at CI5 had been made permanent, Cowley told Doyle that he would be expected to work with a partner in the near future. Doyle tried to object - he hadn’t recovered from Syd Parker's murder, and would very much have preferred to work solo - but Cowley made it quite plain that Doyle didn't have any choice in the matter. It was the first time he gave Doyle his ‘I own you’ spiel, which, even if it wasn't literally true, was close enough to the truth to be unsettling.  
A few days after, Doyle found himself in Cowley's office to meet his new partner. He arrived first and had to wait for a while, before this rather gorgeous bloke strolled into the waiting room in front of Cowley's door. Doyle did a double take. Up until now, he would have been hard-pressed to describe his ideal man, but he knew at first glance that this was him: the incarnation of all his subconscious dreams. Alabaster skin, short dark hair with a definite wave at the nape where it was a bit longer, and a pair of the darkest blue eyes he'd ever seen, with lashes so long and lush that any girl would probably pay a fortune to have ones like them.  
He stood up, extending his hand to the man.  
"Ray Doyle. You’re my new partner, I take it?"  
"Could be. The Cow asked me here this morning to meet my partner... Ha! I work better solo, let me tell you."  
"Well, same here, mate. But ‘the Cow’, as you so quaintly put it," Doyle gave a dirty chuckle, "made it plain that we didn't have any choice. This is it: from now on, we're stuck together."  
"I still don't have to like it." The blue-eyed man pouted so adorably as he said it that it was all Doyle could do to stop himself grabbing the bloke's ears and kissing him until one of them died from lack of oxygen.  
“Well, okay, let's see how this'll work. Could become more interesting than we think, heh?" Doyle said with a bright smile.  
He had tried to infuse his words with as much sexual innuendo as possible, and he saw, to his satisfaction, that the other man seemed to have understood. He raised his left eyebrow - which was already crooked anyway - and gave Doyle a little knowing smile. Doyle's heart skipped a beat. Yeah, he hadn’t been mistaken. Once more, what was beginning to be known as his « gaydar » had worked. Interesting times, indeed.  
Cowley interrupted them with a summons into his office.  
“Gentlemen, as you surmised, I have called you here to introduce you to each other as partners. Raymond Doyle, Bodie. Bodie, Raymond Doyle.  
Doyle couldn’t help the rather undignified squeak that escaped him. Bodie? How was this possible?  
He managed to regain his composure enough to concentrate on the man in front of him - his new partner. It turned out that Bodie had been part of CI5 for a while, and had been away on an op for some time, which explained why they hadn’t met before. From the start, they worked quite well together, and a few weeks later, Doyle made his first social move towards Bodie: he invited him to his place for pasta.  
A social move… and perhaps more, Doyle hoped, if what he had perceived on their first meeting was based in fact and not in fantasies.  
“It’s not much. I’ll just throw together tomato sauce and some spaghetti. I’ve got a bottle of Valpolicella that would go well with the meal.”  
“Sounds nice! Why not?” Bodie said with a peculiar twinkle in his eyes; the twinkle Doyle recognised from that first meeting outside Cowley’s office.  
“Only,” he added, I must warn you that I have a rather… unusual flatmate.”  
“A flatmate? I thought Cowley forbade living with anyone unvetted at a CI5 flat. And I would know if your flatmate had been vetted.”  
“Oh, don’t worry. He’s been veted, even if he’s never been vetted.” Doyle chuckled at the look of incomprehension on Bodie’s face. “Pets aren’t forbidden, are they? My flatmate is a cat. But he’s a bit special, as you’ll see. If you agree to come and eat my pasta, that is,” finished Doyle with a low chuckle that meant ‘pasta’ was not exactly what he meant Bodie to eat… Or at least, not the only thing.  
That young man was not fooled for a second; he really wanted to taste Doyle’s... pasta. To tell the truth, Bodie had wanted him since the first time he’d laid eyes on him. And a bizarre cat wasn’t going to deter him from that worthy endeavour!  
They were both in Doyle’s gold Capri, having spent the day looking for an elusive grass of Doyle’, which Doyle thought would help him to convince his partner to stay at his flat after the meal, considering that Bodie lacked his own form of transport. Provided he didn’t do a runner when he saw Bodie – the other Bodie, that is.  
_Oh, shit! How am I gonna explain to him that my cat, my three-headed, monstrous cat, has the same name as him?_  
Doyle decided to brazen it out - to introduce Bodie to Bodie (he was beginning to have difficulty sorting out his thoughts about those two) when the two came face to face - or faces.  
Once they arrived at his flat, Doyle opened the door and, without thinking, immediately called, “Bodie!”  
“Why are you shouting?” the human Bodie said. “I’m right beside you.”  
“I wasn’t calling you. I was calling my cat.”  
“Your…?”  
Bodie stopped short when Bodie (the four-legged, three-headed one) entered the living room, mewing happily to greet his slave before glancing enquiringly at the other two-legged creature that had come in with his food provider. Immediately, Bodie’s mind (the three-faced Bodie) began to ponder the possible ways to enslave this new human as well. He started rubbing his faces on the creature’s legs, zigzagging between them. The human (clumsy beast, thought Bodie, the four-legged one) stumbled and would have fallen if the other human had not steadied him with a well-placed hand on his hip.  
Bodie raised his eyes to Doyle. “What the hell is that?”  
“A cat.”  
“A cat. With three heads, and called Bodie. Are you kidding me?”  
“Nope. He did have three different names – I gave one to each of his heads before I realised he was mostly a single cat, ‘cause he only has one brain, see, although a slightly larger one than an ordinary cat. Which makes him a genius cat. Besides, why call all of them separately, when they can’t come to me separately anyway?”  
Bodie found that logic a bit nonplussing, but no more than the cat’s very strange physiognomy.  
“I see. So you called this… monstrosity… Bodie. Is this a joke at my expense?”  
“Bodie! Bodie – my cat, I mean – is ten years old, going on eleven. He’s been named like this since a few months after I got him. If there’s an usurper here, it’s got to be you.”  
Bodie remained mute for a few seconds.  
“Eh? How do you work this out? I’ve been named Bodie since I was born, and I dare say I was born quite a few years before your… strange flatmate.”  
“So what? You both have the same name. Do you have a monopoly on it? Seems to me Bodie’s a common enough English name!”  
“Hmmm. Okay.”  
Bodie peered at the cat, who was watching him with hopeful eyes – eyes of a shade of blue distressingly similar to his own, he noted.  
“He doesn’t look like a bad sort, despite his…”  
“…difference?” Doyle suggested.  
“I was going to say ‘deformity’, but, okay, difference it is. Can he see with all these eyes?”  
“Only out of four of them. The middle one is non-functional.”  
“Hey, with four eyes, we could use him on stake-outs! With the way his faces are set, he almost has eyes in the back of his head. Heads. Head. Oh, fuck."  
“Good idea. Before or after the pasta?” Doyle proceeded to blush furiously under Bodie’s bemused stare. The silence lengthened, finally forcing Doyle to break it. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where that came from. Can we call it a very bad joke?”  
“Can we?” Bodie said, a slight smile on his too-handsome face. “Ray… Even if you intended it as a joke – which I don’t believe – I’d be inclined to call it a… definite possibility. An appealing one. Come on, you can’t have missed it? The… signals… between us?”  
Relieved, Doyle smiled in his turn.  
“No, I haven’t. I guess it’s why I said that. A bit crude, though, wasn’t it?” He shook himself. “Okay” he continued briskly. “What do you say to ‘after the pasta’, then? And after a drop or two of that wine? It will relax us, and, hopefully, tomorrow we’re only on standby. We can take our time. I’ll make the sauce, okay? Do you want to open the wine and start on it, or to come with me into the kitchen and chat with me while I slave away at the stove?”  
Bodie laughed and carried the bottle to the kitchen, where he proved that he was very able to multitask: he uncorked the bottle, served two glasses, and exchanged small talk with Doyle, while petting Bodie-the-cat, and even filling his food bowl.  
“He’s got a really fine coat, hasn’t he?” Bodie said, his fingers in the cat’s deep, black fur. He had quickly become accustomed to the strange appearance of the animal, whose behaviour was so normal it made it easy to forget he was in any way different.  
“Yes, I love his fur. It’s a lot of work, though, ‘cause it needs brushing almost everyday to look this good. He’s a Bombay, you know. Purebred. Look, he’s black all over, even in his mouth.” Doyle opened the cat’s left side mouth to show Bodie. “In all of his mouths! Only he doesn’t have any pedigree because his breeder never bothered to ask for one – and anyway, his eyes are not standard for his breed. To me, of course, he’s not defective, but he was to the breeder. He would have been put down if I hadn’t taken him in. It’s not easy, caring for him, with the hours I keep. But I manage. I guess I love him as much as he loves me. I’ve always thought he knew I’d saved his life.”  
Bodie smiled but said nothing. They decided to eat in the small kitchen, and Bodie-the-cat waited patiently at their feet for some choice morsels of meat from the sauce. Bad manners for a cat to be fed at his owner’s table, Doyle knew; but then he’d broken so many rules in his life he wasn’t concerned about breaking one more.  
When the human Bodie was fed to his satisfaction, he made a show of patting his relatively flat tummy.  
“I couldn’t eat or drink a thing more! Now you’ve fed the inner man, what about feeding the outside man’s, um, more carnal appetites?”  
Doyle rose slowly from his chair and approached Bodie. Suddently, very cat-like himself, he pounced on his prey.  
Bodie-the-cat didn’t like much what happened next. For one, his slave barred the entrance to the bedroom. How dare he! Bodie (the fur-covered one) was used to sleeping on his slave’s bed. He didn’t like having to make do with a solitary sofa _at all_. And the noises coming from the bedroom were not very reassuring. Was this new human slave harming his usual human slave?  
Yet his worries were relieved the next morning when two very happy humans stepped out of the bedroom, smiling broadly. No, his slave seemed unharmed - even happier. As for the new slave… Well, he went straight for Bodie-the-cat’s food bowl and filled it, which earned him a very good point in the three-headed cat’s opinion.  
They were eating breakfast before Bodie remembered. “Ray, you told me you’d given three different names to your cat at first. What were they?”  
“William, Andrew and Philip, from right to left. But I never use them anymore. Besides, he prefers to be called Bodie, I think.”  
Doyle didn’t understand why he suddenly had to do the Heimlich manœuvre on a choking human Bodie.

The end

**Author's Note:**

> Two-faced cats exist; they are commonly called Janus cats. The condition is known as diprosopus, and very few affected cats survive for longer than a few hours or days, but Frank and Louie (also known as Frankenlouie) have entered the Guinness Book of Records for being the longest-lived Janus cat to date: he (they) just died at 15, on December 4, 2014. I have taken a lot of my inspiration from his story. However, I have never heard of three-faced cats. Let’s call it poetic licence…


End file.
